Ensley's Birth Story

Josh had been off work since the 24th of February since the only available job was in Canada and he wanted to be closer to home then that. We used that chunk of time to fix things around the house, enjoy our baby shower and finish up purchasing the things we would need for baby's arrival. March 4th I had a doctor's appointment that was very uneventful. I wasn't checked and the doctor scheduled another appointment for the day after my scheduled due date. March 7th, at around 8:00 am I woke up to use the bathroom. Almost instantly I noticed I was having cramping very similar to menstral cramps. The first I had in the entire pregnancy. They were exactly five minutes apart from the get go. I woke Josh up to tell him I was feeling uncomfortable and described the pain. He immediately said "You're in labor" I told him "I don't think these are contractions, they just feel like period cramps" to which he replied, "That's what the doctor said they would feel like, don't you remember?" I didn't remember her saying that, but I did remember that contractions could be brought on by dehydration, and since I had been sleeping for hours I decided I better try to drink some water and see if they would go away. I filled up my water bottle and started sipping it while we lay in bed. They weren't going away, they were getting stronger and closer together. I decided I wanted to get up and jump in the shower in case we needed to head to the hospital. The next thing that needed to be done was installing the car seat. This was something that Josh had procrastinated doing until literally the last minute. He got it put together and installed, under pressure, no problems, like a champ. I was in labor in the nursery watching him add the head support cushion, strap covers, and weather cover and ooing and ahhing over how cute it was between the ow ow ow I kept repeating during contractions. By the time we loaded my bag into the car (no baby bag, we hadn't had one packed yet), I had been having contractions for two hours that were as close as two minutes apart. I said, "Okay, time to go to the hospital, this is when the doctor said we should go" Josh was a little dumbfounded. You only ever hear stories of first labors lasting days, or women having multiple false alarms and being turned back when they try to be admitted to the hospital. He asked if I was sure I didn't want to wait a little longer at home. I told him the hospital was only just down the street, and if they turned us away, it wouldn't be  a big deal. I didn't want to be the girl who waited too long and couldn't get an epidural. Which ended up being a very good call. When we entered the hospital I told the receptionist that I thought I was in labor. She asked if I wanted a wheel chair to go up to the third floor birthing center. I told her I could manage. When we went up to the third floor the nurses took us into a room where they gave me a gown to put on. I had a hard time figuring out front from back, it took me awhile getting it on and when I went to open the door to the bathroom to go back out into the room I noticed directions for putting on the gown. Nice. I climbed into the bed and gave the nurse all my information as she typed it into a computer that was next to me. Then they had to check me. It was the most pain I felt during the whole ordeal. I screamed, and cried, and hyperventilated, while some nurse walked by in the background and snided "It shouldn't hurt that bad" well, it did. I was at a five. They asked if I wanted an epidural I said, "Yes, I think that would be a good idea" She also asked me if my water had broke. I told her "No, I don't think so" to which she said "Actually I think it has and it seems like there is meconium" This had me a little worried, she assured me it would be ok, they would just need to stall me while I was pushing her out so they would have time to suction her mouth before she had a chance to take her first breaths. Getting the IV in seemed to be quite the ordeal, as I was a little dehydrated, my veins were small, and I have poor circulation. Three nurses, a smaller needle, and four attempts later the anethesioligist was finally called up and she had only a little trouble inserting it. "Fifth time's a charm" I said. I was checked again after that and was dilated to a seven. I needed to wait until the IV fluids were done draining into me before I could have the epidural and I was very nervous that I would run out of time before that could happen. Luckily I didn't. After the epidural I didn't feel the pains of the contractions at all anymore. I couldn't even tell I was having them. I was very hungry though and could feel hunger pains. All I could think about was how much I was looking forward to eating a packzi for breakfast before my labor had started and nixed the idea. After having some family visitors for awhile I was  put on oxygen to help wake up baby who had fallen asleep in utero despite the contractions. The nurse was concerned that this would make it harder to push her out. After that I was checked again. I was at a nine and a half and the nurse said the doctor would be coming in soon and had me start with some practice pushing. The first attempts seemed horrible although the nurse and Josh were both very reassuring and just helped me by telling me what I was doing wrong, not holding in my breath while pushing. I got the hang of it fast however, because once baby was further down in the canal my stomach muscles seemed to take things into there own hands and were contracting involuntarily more or less. The nurse said this was a very good thing. Since my labor was moving so quickly they tried to slow down the delivery part so that I would have more time to stretch I guess. The nurse was having me skip pushing every other contraction and just breath through it. This was very difficult and uncomfortable to do and it didn't help anyway, at all. The doctor came in to deliver ( not my usual doctor who happened to be out of town, just a random doctor that I had not previously met) he was told, "They didn't take childbirth classes" something that we kept hearing a lot as if it were a huge deal, and almost immediately he gave me an episiotomy. I didn't feel pain, but I knew what he was doing. Even that didn't help much. I still ended up with a four degree tear as I birthed my 9.4 lb baby girl. The birth was amazing, I didn't feel any pain. However, the aftermath was terrible (still not as painful as getting checked when I first arrived) they had turned off my epidural while the doctor stitched me up. I could feel every stitch, and how long the thread was that he used. There was quite an ordeal when I nurses lost track of three cotton gauzes. The places the doctor searched not once, but twice was horrendous. Josh was very upset about that. I'm surprised he didn't punch everyone in that room in there faces, if he weren't on an I'm a daddy high, I'm sure he would have. I'm not sure exactly how long it took to get everything cleaned up and taken care of, but I delivered at 5:15 and our family that was waiting patiently in the waiting room weren't actually able to come into the room until 8:30ish and visiting hours ended at 9.